DANGER
Conflict zone. Ground combat enabled. Space combat may be enabled without warning.
An elliptical orbit keeps Derra III the furthest planet from the sun for most of its astronomical year. A desolate world of rocky crags and barren wastes, it is generally considered lifeless. However, the deepest depressions of the surface hold pockets of thin atmosphere, becoming richer further down in the craters and caves. This air is nominally breathable for short periods of time, as long as one is not particularly active. But the towering peaks of the twin mountain ranges sit in the full vacuum of open space. Daytime temperatures on Derra III are globally polar, and life has only been able to adapt and survive in those lowlands that don't happen to sit in shadow. Some of these locations have been used as hideouts by pirates and smugglers in the past. Only in recent decades, when the research colony was established on a western plateau, was Derra III's true wealth discovered: molecular water, absolutely pure, with nothing else dissolved in it. Most local residents worked in the underground ice mining industry until the anarchy of the Animosity Plague brought civilization to a standstill. Now, they are looking for a way offworld or competing over pools of warm air. The ice barons have attempted to reinstate order through a grassroots movement with the slogan "restore Derra III's former glory," but it is largely mocked by their traditional foes, the guild laborers.